Introduction to building robots

Building robots is a complex task. It is fun, but it requires a lot of learning.
There is no university course that will teach you everything needed to build a
robot, but the good news is that you can master the skills needed on your own.
In this guide you can learn the basics, to help you get started.

Building a robot has three major phases. You need to build the hardware, which
means you have to create plastic and metal parts. Then you need to build the
electronics that will collect information from the environment, and will control
the robot's motion. The final phase is the software.

Building the hardware

The first phase of building a robot is designing the mechanical parts. This area
requires some knowledge of mechanical engineering, but it is not as difficult as
it might seem. It all starts with learning to use a 3D design software. The following
page lists the most popular design software. We recommend you to use Solidworks
or Autodesk Inventor.

Once you have drawn your robot parts, you need to manufacture them. The three
most popular methods to manufacturing parts are:

3D printing which is a great way to make plastic partsCNC milling which is mainly used for making metalic partsLaser cutting which is excellent for plastic/wooren parts made from plexiglass or wood

Building the electronic parts

The second phase of building a robot is creating the control circuits. You need to get
familiar with basic electronic parts and microcontrollers. It is a very interesting and
fun topic, which might seem hard at first, but the learning curve is very enjoyable.
The following video tutorials will help you get started. For building electronic circuits
we recommend you to use the free KiCad software package.

Building the software

When you build a robot software you will perform two different tasks: you will
program microcontrollers, and you will write higher level data acquisition and
robot control logic.

The microcontroller layer is the interface to the hardware. You will collect data
from sensors and pass this data to the upper, higher level code, and you will receive
instructions from the higher level code and instruct the hardware. In our
robots we use Ozeki Matrix electronic modules and
Arduinos. Check out the following doucments to
get started: